IT Professionals

For information technology professionals, open source represents all the benefits to developers plus a boatload of business advantages. IT departments use open source to avoid buying commercial software, to replace it, and to gain power in negotiations. In using open source, IT departments can save money or support their businesses better. (You can find out more about how companies can use open source in my book Open Source for the Enterprise.)

Commercial Software Vendors

Most commercial software vendors love open source like Linux or the MySQL database when it helps make it easier to sell their products. The same vendors may then hate open source when it competes.

Companies use open source in many different ways. Some build entire products on open source and then release the source code as a marketing vehicle. SugarCRM and Compiere are two companies that follow this model. Open source becomes a marketing technique in that case.

Some companies try to imitate the collaborative development methodologies of open source on their teams. Collabnet has created tools that help companies develop software using lessons learned from open source projects.

Commercial vendors sometimes release proprietary software into the marketplace to either create a friendly environment for their products or to threaten a competitor by creating a free alternative. IBM made its Eclipse development environment open source, which has created a thriving community.

Commercial software vendors also sometimes release as open source products that are old or ailing to breathe new life into them by trying to form a developer community. Netscape was the first to do this, and many have followed. Commercial software vendors also release products as open source to attempt to relieve themselves of the work of supporting the projects without leaving users in the lurch.

Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Such

Entrepreneurs have put open source to work building companies or products. Yahoo, Amazon, and Google all make heavy use of open source. A growing number of venture-funded companies are built using open source or offer services related to open source. Some companies have even been known to publish books and run conferences related to open source.

Free Software and Open Source

Now that you are really hep to what open source means, it is time for some inside baseball. Many people do not know that the term open source came out of a sort of schism. The roots of open source as it exists today started in a concept created by Richard Stallman called free software. The Free Software Foundation and the GNU project, which Stallman founded, created much of the legal and software infrastructure that made possible projects like Linux and most of the rest of the open source that exists today. Stallman has tried to emphasize this by asking that people refer to the operating system as GNU/Linux.

Richard Stallman is famous for his brilliance, his strong opinions, and for the saying "free software is free as in speech, not as in beer." But, like many mavericks, Richard Stallman has rubbed some people the wrong way. Some felt that his strident attitudes about certain subjects, like intellectual property, and his leadership style were driving people away from using free software. A group of people including Eric Raymond, Tim O'Reilly, and several others came together and started using the term open source instead of free software. This took hold, although many people use the terms separately, or use the combined term free and open source software, abbreviated as FOSS.

Open Source Institutions

The rise in importance and widespread use of open source has resulted in the creation of several sorts of institutions that seek to play various roles. The institutions may seek to promote a specific project or practice, or to be watchdogs or certifiers, or to promote a philosophy or an approach to open source.

The Free Software Foundation is the mother of all open source institutions, and it plays pretty much every role mentioned. Through the GNU project, code is created, such as the GNU C compiler, the emacs editor, and many other famously useful programs. The GNU General Public License is the most commonly used open source license. And the foundation is quite active in promoting its values in the realms of intellectual property and patents.

Open Source Initiative published the Open Source Definition--an attempt to precisely define open source--and certifies that the growing number of licenses under which open source is published conforms to the definition. The Open Source Initiative also provides educational and advocacy material on its web site related to open source issues.

Many other institutions are focused on particular projects but also serve many different roles, including:

Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)
Home to Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, the OSDL, founded by large companies
like IBM and Intel but with a large external membership, seeks to promote
the development of Linux and its use in enterprise computing.

Apache Software Foundation
Umbrella organization for the Apache project that developed the Apache
HTTP Server and many other projects.

Perl Foundation
A foundation dedicated to promoting the development, education, and use of
the Perl language.

Open Source Applications Foundation
A foundation started by Mitch Kapor that is developing Chandler, an open
source personal information manager for email, addresses, and calendar.

Mozilla.org
Originally the home to the source code initially released as open source
from Netscape, and now the home to many popular projects such as the Firefox
browser. The Mozilla Foundation provides oversight to Mozilla.org.

OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is the open source version of Star Office, a suite of programs
for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, often called an office suite.
Star Office was started in the mid-1980s and was purchased by Sun Microsystems
in 1999.

All sorts of other institutions such as universities, standards bodies, and the like have important connections to the open source community.

Now that you know what open source is, perhaps it is time for you to start a project yourself.

Dan Woods
, a seasoned CTO, has built technology for companies ranging from Time Inc. New Media to TheStreet.com. He has managed the product development cycle from initial requirements through sales for web sites and software products designed for the publishing and financial services industries.